HTC filed a request at the US Patent and Trademark Office to protect the term HTC Play as a trademark. Reportedly this is the name of a future HTC-exclusive app market for games (I’m guessing Android ones), to which every HTC phone will have access.

Now I’m not sure if another app store is what we most need at the moment, as there are, what, 10 of them already? You have the Amazon store you have the Opera store, a couple of obscure ones like SlideMe and, of course, the Android Market . I just don’t see the point. Android started off as a unified OS with its own ecosystem, spanning through manufacturer to manufacturer. Now there are Xperia PLAY-exclusive games, exclusive application stores and this all makes the choice of which droid to grab all the harder for the end user. Read more »

Sony was victimized by hackers again as a Sony Ericsson website in Canada was breached and the personal data of 2000 people was stolen. Also details on another 8500 users were leaked on a Sony Music Entertainment website in Greece.

Among the sensitive information lost were e-mails, passwords and phone numbers. Credit card information wasn’t stolen this time so that’s a high five on that account, at least. Read more »

The creator of the Modular computer, Xi3 is going to be the first company to bring the Chrome OS to the desktop realm, using a revamped version of it, called ChromiumPC.

The Xi3 Modular computer can easily fit in your hand as it’s really small and houses three interconnected modules – one for the processor as well as primary and secondary I/O modules. The whole thing is encased in an aluminum body, which might to us bears slight resemblance to a toaster, but is certainly among the world’s smallest desktop PC. Read more »

You’d think after a major launch such as the Firefox 4, the guys at Mozilla must be taking a break, but you’d be wrong. Mozilla recently introduced the Forefox Aurora development channel to support more frequent updates and today they released a spanking new beta of the upcoming Firefox 5.

The first beta comes to you after a mere five weeks of testing on the Firefox Aurrora channel. Read more »

It’s been a long and tedious ride back to online-hood for the PSN but it seems that it’s finally getting up and running. The amount of countries where the PSN is operational again is huge and ranges across 5 continents. Along these are Europe, Australia, parts of Asia and South and North America.

The other bit of news is that Japan, PSN’s homeland, has refused to turn the ‘ON’ switch on the network until assurance has been made that the necessary precautions and counter-hacking measures have been taken. Read more »

Mike Elgan argues an interesting case and we’d have to agree with him. The potential for failure that comes with Chrome OS and the new Google Chromebooks, is strong. To many, it might be fair to say that Windows is the OS we most commonly live with, despite its many, many flaws; the OS we love to hate if you will and Google feels it’s time to give the people an OS they can be proud of.

Of course Microsoft have the enviable position of having the dominant OS across both the business and personal computing markets and one that Apple and Google would both surely kill for. But what does it take to knock Windows off the top spot? Google think their new way of doing things is the way of the future. A cloud based computing service where all your files, personal information and what-not are suspended in the cloud; the biggest draw being that if your computer were to fail, you lose nothing and could instantly pick up where you left off. Read more »

The Sony Playstation Network was expected to be up and running again this week. However it seems that Sony didn’t realize the extent, to which the security of the network was compromised and will hold off restarting it and won’t meet the deadline it set for itself last week.

The main focus is on security and Sony wants to test the entire complex network before it launches it again. This is done to ensure the security of the network and guarantee that personal information won’t get stolen even if the network is subjected to more attacks. Read more »

Google Voice technology is well known to the seasoned Android user (and iOS user, if you have the app), usually one of the stock widgets mounted on your home screens out-the-box, it ties in to some sophisticated software that allows for some pretty advanced search terms and not just ‘things’, it can auto-start your handsets navigation and have a desired location already set for you too!

This great technology once confined to the minds of sci-fi fanatics everywhere is currently in a trial phase by Google, accessible from Google.com. Read more »